“Well, let me see . . .” I began, thinking aloud. “Thin as I am, I could sit with you, though then there would be no place for Dasha . . . and if I sit with Dasha, there’ll be no place for you . . . Wait a minute! If, say, I sat with you, Dasha could sit on our knees. Although now that I think of it, that’s physically impossible, since these cabs are so damned narrow. Well, if, say, I sit with you, Mother, and you, Dasha, sit up on the box next to the cabbie . . . Dasha, how about sitting next to the cabbie?”
“Next to the cabbie?” my mother-in-law gasped. “I am a widow of high social standing! I will not allow a daughter of mine to seat herself next to some provincial lout! Has anyone ever heard the like? A lady sitting up on the box next to a cabbie!”
“In that case, how about this,” my resourceful wife ventured. “Mother will sit in the back, as is proper, and I’ll sit on the floor at her feet. I can huddle up and steady myself on the empty spot next to Mother, while you, Kirill, can sit with the cabbie . . . Your family has no standing worth mentioning, so there’s no harm in your sitting up on the box.”
“Yes, that might work. And yet,” I said, scratching my head, “as I admit to being slightly tipsy, what happens if I fall off the box?”
“Slightly tipsy? Ha!” my mother-in-law countered. “Well, if you’re so afraid of falling off, why not stand on the footboard and hold on to the back of the cab. We’ll go slowly—you won’t fall off.”
Inebriated though I was, I could only spurn this shameful suggestion. A Russian man of letters clinging willy-nilly to the back of a cab! That would be the end of civilization as we know it! Exhausted from all the drinking and the perplexing puzzle I was facing, I was ready to throw up my hands and go home on foot when the cabbie leaned down to us and said:
“How about trying this . . .”
He offered us a solution to the problem that we all accepted.
What was this solution?
P.S. As an aid to the less nimble-minded among my readers, the cabbie’s solution had me sitting next to my mother-in-law, while my wife was close enough to be able to whisper in my ear, “Kirill, you’re jabbing me with your elbow. Move back a little!” The cabbie was sitting in his place. Surely the reader can now guess our configuration.
The solution:
I sat next to my mother-in-law with my back to the cabbie, my legs dangling out the back of the cab. My wife stood in the cab in the space where my legs would have been if I had been sitting like a normal human being, and steadied herself by holding on to my shoulders.
ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF NATIONS
(From the Notebook of a Naïve Member of the Russian Geographic Society)
The French are noted for their frivolity. They read immoral novels, marry without their parents’ consent, do not obey doormen, do not respect their elders, and fail to read The Moscow News. They are so devoid of morals that their courts are overwhelmed with divorce cases. Sarah Bernhardt, for instance, divorces husbands with such regularity that through her patronage one court secretary alone grew richer by two houses. French women act in operettas and stroll along Nevsky Prospekt, while the men bake French bread and sing the Marseillaise. Many of their names rhyme with gigolo: Monsieur Rigolo, Monsieur Tremolo, Monsieur Ex-Nihilo, to name a few.
The Swedes waged war against Peter the Great and gave our compatriot Lapshin the idea of Swedish matches (though they have not yet taught him how to make them work). Swedes ride Swedish horses, listen to Swedish ladies sing in restaurants, and grease the wheels of their carts with Norwegian tar. They live in remote areas.
The Greeks are mainly involved in trade. They sell sponges, goldfish, wine from Santorini, and Greek soap. Greeks who lack trading permits lead monkeys on leashes, or teach ancient languages. In their free time they fish near the Odessa and Taganrog customs offices. The Greek feeds on the bad-quality food served in Greek taverns, which is what ultimately leads to his demise. From time to time one comes upon a tall Greek such as Mr. Vlados, who runs a Tatar restaurant in Moscow—a man who is very tall and very fat.
Spaniards strum their guitars night and day, fight duels outside windows, and exchange letters with Constantine Shilovsky, a country squire from Zvenigorod, who composed “Baby Tiger” and “Oh to Be a Spaniard.” They are never accepted into the civil service, as they have long hair and wear plaids. They marry for love, but kill their wives soon after the wedding in a fit of jealousy, despite the protestations of the Spanish police officers, who are highly respected in Spain. They engage in the preparation of Spanish fly.
Circassians, to a man, sport the title “Your Excellency,” drink Georgian wine, and brawl in editorial offices. They are engaged in the production of antique Caucasian weaponry. Their minds are entirely unclouded by thought, and their noses are long so they can be led out by them of public places, where they cause disorder.
Persians battle Russian bedbugs, fleas, and cockroaches, for which they concoct Persian powder. They have been waging this war for a long time but it is far from won, and judging by the girth of merchants’ feather beds that are stuffed with banknotes, and the cracks in the bureaucrats’ beds through which banknotes slip away, victory is not in sight. Wealthy Persians sit on Persian carpets, poor Persians sit on stakes, a position the former find far more pleasurable. They wear the Imperial Order of the Lion and Sun, which is held by our very own Julius Schreyer, cannoneer and war correspondent extraordinaire, who garnered Persian sympathies. Another recipient of this order is the bankrupt director of the Skopin Bank, who received it for untiring services rendered to Persia, as many Moscow merchants also did for their unfaltering support of the Persians’ aforementioned war on insects.
The British put an exceedingly high value on time. “Time is money” is their motto, and therefore, instead of paying their tailors what they owe them, they pay them from time to time. The British are busy: they give public speeches, sail about in boats, and poison Chinese with opium. Leisure is a foreign concept to them. They have no time for dinner, no time to spend at balls, no time for tête-à-têtes, no time for steam baths. They send menservants to their rendezvous, who are given carte blanche. (Children born to these menservants are recognized as legitimate.) This busy nation lives in British clubs and on the Promenade des Anglais. The Englishman feeds on Epsom salts, and succumbs to the English disease.
A MODERN GUIDE TO LETTER WRITING
What is a letter? It is one of the means by which thoughts and feelings are exchanged; and yet, as letters are so often written by people lacking all thought and feeling, this definition does not quite hit the mark. The best definition, perhaps, was once provided by a lofty postal clerk: “A letter is a noun without which postal clerks would end up jobless and stamps unsold.”
There are open letters and sealed letters. The latter have to be opened with the utmost care, and, after having been read through, resealed carefully so that the addressee’s suspicions are not aroused. Reading other people’s mail is generally not to be recommended—although, of course, the benefit those close to the addressee might gain from doing so warrants the practice. Parents, wives, and superiors interested in a person’s morals, thoughts, and the purity of his convictions must read his letters.
Letters should be written with clarity and discernment. Courtesy, respect, and modesty of expression serve to ornament every letter, and when writing a letter to one’s superiors in the civil service, these considerations, as well as carefully following the scale of rank in addressing one’s superiors, is a prerequisite. You might, for instance, begin your letter in the following fashion: “Most magnanimous and beneficent Excellency, Ivan Ivanovich, May I draw your illustrious attention to . . .”